SKILL28architecture-engineering
Documenting Architecture Decisions
Captures architecturally significant choices as concise decision records with context, drivers, alternatives, consequences, and review triggers.
Primary benefit
Preserves the rationale behind expensive decisions so future changes can evaluate the original trade-offs instead of reopening them from memory.When to use
Use when a software decision materially affects structure, quality attributes, dependencies, interfaces, technology choices, or team direction and its rationale must remain reviewable over time.
When not to use
Do not use for routine implementation details that are inexpensive to reverse and already evident from the code or local documentation.
Use cases
Record why a team chose a modular monolith instead of microservices
Supersede an accepted architecture decision after new scale or reliability evidence changes the trade-off
Example prompts
Use documenting-architecture-decisions to turn this architecture discussion into a focused ADR with context, decision drivers, realistic alternatives, consequences, and a review trigger.Install this skill
Choose the command for your operating system and run it from the repository root.
Bash
./install.sh --skill documenting-architecture-decisionsPowerShell
./install.ps1 --skill documenting-architecture-decisionsChatGPT
Download Skill ZIPCompatibility
- Surfaces
- ChatGPT · Codex · Claude Code
- Operating systems
- Linux · macOS · Windows
- Install modes
- PluginFilesystem
Dependencies
No external dependencies
Part of systems
Curated systems that canonically include this method.
Used in evidence
Reports that explicitly list this method among the applied methods.